I used Windows for a long time, and then I moved to Linux. I was all fine and dandy until I took a quick glance over my shoulder at the then-new Windows 7. It struck me exactly how Linux and Windows compare in terms of their strengths, and those differences brought me back to part-time […]
Even though it’s still the aftershave your dad wears, and you’ll never buy it, the campaign worked. It doesn’t matter if the product is a dud one (I don’t think the brand mattered here), social media campaigns can win nevertheless.
Brian Kelly’s paper From Web Accessibility to Web Adaptability and his Web Accessibility 2.0 paradigm advocates that access should be provided however the student chooses. This includes disability, but also preference – including open source (i.e. I choose the platform that I learn on/via). Instead of fitting some guidelines for accessibility of the web, it […]
So, Paul the Octopus was right. 100% right. And that’s no-nonsense proof of a psychic animal, yes? Randi, are you there? Of course, the skeptics amongst us, and indeed the Forteans (such as myself) will not accept this as proof of anything. So that begs the question: what kind of thing will us twits accept […]
I was listening to an old Sitepoint podcast which is about the future of publishing in a digital world. More specifically, it’s about how and why print publishing can stand alongside digital publishing, especially when the latter offers free, easy-to-store content at your convenience. The podcast offers a host of technical and, as they term […]
Many academics and other professionals worry about social media and the loss of authority in other voices which often now have equal power. On the other hand, those ‘less authoritative’ voices are just the latest in a long history of people complaining how the ‘establishment’ fails to let others in. But the very reason that […]
I mean proper geeks. Not gadgetophiles, not Stephen Fry. I mean Cory Doctorow, Jonathan Zittrain, Richard Stallman and me. The first of these men have been quoted on Nick Carr’s post The iPad Luddites, and Nick suggests that we should all just shut up about the fact that the iPad may usher in an era […]
OK, so I’m not holding a seance or anything, but this seems like a good follow-on from my previous post. I find it much easier to write when I’m on holiday, and so in sunnier climes last week I began writing at pace. Like most people, I also read a lot on my hols, and […]
As someone who is interested in Free culture as well as writing, I was struck when I came across this from a long list of tips for authors: “5 When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it”. When I think of my favourite novels (2001: A […]
I’ve just come across this article on ‘7 of the Best Free Linux Medical Imaging Software‘. It’s on Linux.com. Now, my problem with this is: why on earth do I want to know about this? And more to the point: why would anyone who does want to know about this want to know about it […]